As the Bison Debate Rages On, Leaders Miss an Obvious Solution

Springtime in the Rockies is considered by many as the most beautiful time of the year in Montana as “greens up” and wildflowers blanket the valleys against the backdrop of majestic snow-capped peaks.  Yet, as the snow geese fill the skies, the grim ritual of reducing the number of Yellowstone’s bison as they seek lower elevations to calve and graze once again captures national attention.

Longtime Montanans are all too familiar with the scene more than 40 years ago when state hunters and federal agents slaughtered thousands of bison as they left the Yellowstone National Park. The gory photos were published internationally as the last of the bison that once roamed the Great Plains were gunned down for simply walking across the invisible park boundary.

Back then, the reasoning was a simple but scientifically-flawed fear that bison would transmit brucellosis to cattle, which can cause them to abort and threatened Montana’s “brucellosis free” status.  That’s supremely ironic since it was cattle that transmitted the disease to the bison in the first place — and there has never been a documented case of cattle being infected by bison in the wild.

In an attempt to find alternatives, state, federal, conservation and tribal interests came up with the Interagency Bison Management Plan to control the park’s bison population. The plan combined hunting as well as sending bison to be butchered and the meat distributed to tribes.

Dead bison, however, don’t pass on their genes.  So it also contained a provision to hold bison in a quarantine facility to ensure they were brucellosis free, and then send them to tribal nations who highly value the genetic integrity of the park’s wild bison.

So far this year, about 700 bison have been “removed” through hunt, slaughter, and quarantine under the recently updated management plan and the park plans to “remove” about that many more to keep the herd between 3,000 and 6,000 animals.

The controversies surrounding the actions have intensified rather than cooled.  Some seek “roam free” status outside the park. Others support or criticize tribal hunting and question the treaty rights. And some claim the quarantine and transfer to tribes is the privatization of public wildlife that threatens genetic integrity through “domestication” of wild bison.

All those claims are far too complex for one column, but they’re not hard to find in great detail online.  Suffice it to say there are strengths and weaknesses to all those positions.

It’s pretty hard to argue that being in close contact with tourists, cars and snowmobiles fits the definition of “wild” — especially when they “mow” residential yards in West Yellowstone.  Equally hard to believe being released on tribal lands is any more “domestication” than being in close contact with the park’s millions of tourists.

Likewise, “hunting” is a misnomer for these human-tolerant bison.  And the idea that herds of bison can simply “roam free” in the increasingly populated lands around the park ignores the inescapable conflicts and consequences such “freedom” would entail for humans and bison.

But if truly wild bison are the goal, the park should be sending excess bison to their ancestral lands in the 1.1 million acre CM Russell and UL Bend National Wildlife Refuges.  By doing so they preserve the genetic integrity, provide a true hunt, and the bison are much more likely to survive than “roaming free” near the park.

Why this hasn’t happened is a dang good question.  Moving federal wildlife to a federal wildlife refuge so they can truly “roam free” seems like such an obvious solution for the park, the tribes, the state — and most importantly, for the bison.